Labor promises $530m to expand Hurstbridge line in marginal seats

Trains will run every six and a half minutes at Greensborough in Melbourne’s north-east, with the Andrews government promising to duplicate single sections of track running through marginal seats if it wins the November election.

For $530 million, Labor has promised to rebuild Greensborough station and add three kilometres of extra track between Greensborough and Montmorency.

The line will narrow to a single track as it passes through Eltham Station and duplicate again at the next station, Diamond Creek, for a 1.5 kilometre stretch to Wattle Glen.

It will be built in 2020 and finished by 2022, benefiting commuters in the marginal, Labor-held seats of Eltham and Yan Yean.

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It follows Opposition promises earlier this year to duplicate the track from Greensborough to Eltham for more than $300 million.

Premier Daniel Andrews, who oversaw the first stage of Hurstbridge line upgrades that duplicated track between Heidelberg and Rosanna, said only Labor could be trusted to carry out the next phase.

"Only the people who delivered stage one of the Hurstbridge line upgrades can be trusted to deliver stage two and that, is of course Labor," Mr Andrews said on Wednesday morning, flanked by Eltham MP Vicki Ward and Yan Yean MP Danielle Green.

Trains would run every 10 minutes at Eltham and Montmorency, every six and a half minutes at Greensborough and every 20 minutes at Hurstbridge, Diamond Creek and Wattle Glen. Two extra Hurstbridge express services will also be added.

Mr Andrews said he was confident the single section of track that runs on the century-old Eltham Trestle Bridge would not cause bottlenecks.

It was not being expanded to preserve the nearby oval and childcare centre — sites that would be threatened by the Opposition's "undercooked" plan, he said.

“[The Coalition] can’t have spoken to too many locals when they came up with this plan because it simply doesn’t make any sense to be intruding on the footy club, essentially wiping them out. The childcare centre would have to go as well, and this historic asset [the bridge] would be left simply to rot.”

But Liberal candidate for Eltham Nick McGowan shot back, claiming the government's plan would "create the bottlenecks of the future" and make 10-minute services from Eltham impossible.

The Coalition would add the extra tracks through Eltham alongside the historic bridge. It would not impact the local football club or child care centre, Mr McGowan said.

"They're scaremongering and they know it," he said of Labor.

Labor is also promising to add an extra five morning peak hour services to Mernda after it frees up capacity at the Clifton Hill junction, where the Hurstbridge and Mernda lines meet.

Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said this would significantly boost capacity to Mernda — a new station on the South Morang line built by the government, which will open in late August and is expected to add an extra 8000 daily commuters to the line.

"It will involve some realignment of tracks, it will involve some signalling work as well to get more efficient train pathways on what is already a bottleneck," Ms Allan said.

The government removed two level crossings on the Hurstbridge line this year at a cost of more than $400 million and duplicated a 1.2 kilometre single section of track for $140 million. Two extra peak -hour services are set to run next month.

Eltham resident John O'Brien said upgrading the train line was necessary, and he would "weigh up" Labor and the Coalition's competing rail promises before deciding how he would vote this November.